Ways to Explore

It's been two years since the Mideast peace process collapsed, two years in which each side has done terrible things to the other side. We wanted to understand what that has done to people living in Israel and the West Bank, and to see if anyone is feeling hope.

Host Ira Glass, along with This American Life contributors Adam Davidson and Nancy Updike, recently spent a week in Israel and the West Bank to put together this special program of stories about what life is like there these days...with Palestinians stuck indoors for weeks under curfew and many Israelis trying to ignore the conflict. Though that, of course, isn't easy.

Ira visits the border where Israel meets the West Bank and finds it's more like Scottsdale, Arizona, than he ever expected. We also hear from Tel Aviv advertising writer Erez Hadary, who created a bumper sticker that expresses Israeli confusion right now; from Rula Hamadani, a Palestinian who's feeling just as confused; and from journalist and historian Tom Segev (author of 1949: The First Israelis, Elvis in Jerusalem, and other books) about some very odd Israeli poll numbers. (5 minutes) Politics